“One thing I’m dying to try is cooking the food that’s already in my fridge. I don’t need it to become a habit. I just want to try it. Just once. Just once in my stupid, pointless life I’d like to skip the takeout and say to myself, ‘OK you self-righteous, needy, two-faced, unfunny, lecherous baritone, eat your groceries.’ That might sound small, but I believe in being gentle with myself.” — Cole Escola, 35, comedian and actor
Finally Join TikTok
“I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions and how everyone wants to be fit and look great and also feel young. And the one thing I’d like to try that I’ve never done that will help me feel young in some ways is TikTok. Opera is in a constant state of emergency and TikTok has a thinly-veiled chaos. So I think there’s some similarities, but to be an opera singer, you have to live this very disciplined life. And I’m attracted and drawn to the kind of spontaneity that seems like it’s required for TikTok. And I’m always trying to get insight into what different communities and different generations are thinking and try to find bridges between that and this kind of seemingly foreboding world of classical music.” — Anthony Roth Costanzo, 39, Grammy-nominated opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera and artist-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic
Learn to Drive
“I think 2022 is maybe going to be the year that I learn how to drive. I never learned how to drive. My wife and I bought a car during the first pandemic summer, and I have been insisting to her ever since that I would learn how to drive it. And I think as much as I love being driven, I think it’s finally time that I need to learn how to contribute my weight.” — Mars Hobrecker, 28, tattoo artist
Make Perfect Toast
“I want to learn how to cook. I think as a 45-year-old man, it’s embarrassing that I don’t know how to cook. Because right now, if society collapses, all I could do is tell jokes, and I don’t know if that’s going to get the job done. I want to have something tangible to offer. Right now I can make scrambled eggs, and I used to be able to make spaghetti really good. Oh yeah, and toast. People underestimate the technique involved to make the perfect toast, and I am not one of those people. I take it very seriously: The thing about toast is you want to put the dial between 2 and 3, and then you want to push it down, but you cannot let it pop out. You have to look at it. And just when you see a little bit of brown on there, that’s when you pop it up. You want it to be firm and yet soft in the middle, so then you could put that butter on there.” — Bashir Salahuddin, 45, writer, comedian and co-creator and star of “South Side” on HBO Max
